Training in Demography

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PROJECT SUMMARY The Population Studies and Training Center of Brown University (PSTC) requests continuing support for its T32 National Research Service Award. The long-term goal of the PSTC Demography Training Program is to prepare predoctoral and postdoctoral social scientists to become internationally renowned population investigators and scholars. More concretely, our objectives are to promote research, publication, and grant funding among trainees during and after training. We request support for five predoctoral trainees and one postdoctoral trainee. In this application, we provide evidence of a strong interdisciplinary training program, supported by productive, committed faculty, focused on training doctoral candidates and postdoctoral fellows from Anthropology, Economics, Sociology, and Public Health. We demonstrate that the PSTC training program shows ample evidence of continued intellectual and organizational evolution and dynamic synergy across disciplines and career stages, from new trainee through senior scholar, and a commitment to excellence that will produce the highest quality population science scholars. We show excellent recruitment, retention and placement outcomes in the previous grant period, and we focus on maintaining this excellence while improving professionalization and enhancing young scholars’ paths to future independence with this new application. The PSTC training program proposed here builds on a dynamic research infrastructure. Guided by the NICHD mission to support research, data collection, and research training in demography, reproductive health, and population health, the PSTC makes distinctive intellectual contributions in five primary areas: Migration and Urbanization; Population, Development, and Environment; Children, Families, and Health; Reproductive Health and HIV/AIDS; and Social Foundations of Health Disparities. PSTC research is methodologically broad and innovative, with unique contributions to methods in anthropological demography, spatial and contextual approaches, and research design and causal inference. Predoctoral and postdoctoral trainees are integrated into all these areas. Their training is advanced through coursework, mentored research, working groups, colloquia, methods modules, and professionalization workshops. We show evidence of major institutional support in the form of physical space, significant investments in graduate education generally, and targeted funds to support trainees. Predoctoral trainees are typically selected for T32 funding for one or two years during second or third year of graduate school. An active Training Committee supervises the design of the program and coordinates with our participating departments. The Training Director supports the day-to-day operation of the program. We describe both continuing and innovative organizational and pedagogical efforts to secure the training goals we outline in this application.